Netflix, AT&T Ink Peering Deal, Boost Streaming Speeds

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Netflix and AT&T have reached an agreement that will provide streaming entertainment directly to customers, in the hope of reducing buffering on popular shows.

"We reached an interconnect agreement with Netflix in May and since then have been working together to provision additional interconnect capacity to improve the viewing experience for our mutual subscribers," the companies said in a joint statement. "We're now beginning to turn up the connections, a process that should be complete in the coming days."

Still, it's pretty clear that Netflix is not at all happy about all of this. Following the Comcast deal, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company was basically forced to sign inter-connection deals so Web users would not suffer service slowdowns.

Ideally, strong net neutrality rules would make such deals unnecessary, Hastings argued. But the FCC said its current rulemaking process will not include these peering agreements.

Direct connections can have their benefits. Netflix saw Comcast's streaming speeds improve by 65 percent since inking a arrangement. The company simply believes high-speed connections should be provided by default, and should not require payment.

And while Netflix clings to that belief, the company admitted that this agreementlike earlier onesis expected to ease congestion and improve subscribers' viewing experience.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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